Snakeskin
by Eatsscissors
Summary: Who we are lies in how we are perceived.


Title: Snakeskin

Author: Mari          

Email: Ficangel@yahoo.com

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: They belong to JKR.  I just like to take them out and play with them every now and again.

Distribution: Just let me know where it's going.  I'm narcissistic like that.

Spoilers: Through OotP

When Draco Malfoy was very small, his father gave him a snake's skin. In a house full of luxury and comfort, it was notable in its simplicity. Draco had stared up at his father, and his small face was written into lines of confusion.  
  
"Every time a snake sheds its skin," his father explained, "it gains a new life, but the creature beneath the skin remains the same. Always remember this, Draco. Whatever the rest of the world would seek to make of you, you are a Malfoy, and my son. Everything else comes second."  
  
The snakeskin faded from memory, hidden among the glitter and amusements of childhood long since packed away. The words stayed. Draco thought of them often over the summer between his fifth and sixth year as he prowled the hallways of the mansion, avoiding Narcissa's reddened eyes and the house elves' new insistence on calling him 'Master Malfoy'. Gradually, the words began to take on the feel of a blade in their purpose and their power, so that Draco could almost taste the blood on his tongue as he whispered them to himself, and he found that he didn't really mind.  
  
Hours were spent standing in front of the Malfoy family portraits, studying the greatest of the past. The portraits, which had before scorned him as a mere heir, now paid him the respect due to the master of the house. Draco listened as they spoke, and learned a great deal.  
  
When over half of the Slytherins approached Hermione to join Dumbledore's Army, the rest of the group was surprised. When Draco Malfoy numbered among them, the sound of jaws hitting the floor could be heard all the way into Hogsmeade. Weasley sputtered until he matched his hair and Potter narrowed his eyes until they were mere slits in his face. His temper had been short since the school year started; the rest of the DA repeated rumors amongst themselves and didn't comment when Harry overthrew a curse and scorched the walls during practice. The look that Harry turned onto Draco would have sent any of the other students scurrying for the nearest furniture to hide behind.   
  
Draco only smiled.  
  
Curses and insults flew through the air during practices as each side clung to stereotypes with white-knuckled hands. Harry and Draco were both sent to Madam Pomfrey at least once a week so that she could repair whatever they had done to one another now. Though his eyes were often streaming with pain, the smile on Draco's face never faltered. She would never admit it, not with Slytherin and Gryffindor cooperating with each other for the first time in nearly a millennia, but the rigid nature of Draco's smile sent ice crawling up Madam Pomfrey's spine. She turned her back to it as little as possible.   
  
After nearly a week in which Harry and Draco had not so much as raised their wands to each other, the entire school crackled with like the sky just before the breaking of a storm. The Room of Requirement had refused to show itself, perhaps fearing for its safety with the odd sentience that parts of Hogwarts sometimes showed, and the DA's latest practice was being held in an empty classroom much too small for the near to one hundred members. Certainly too small for everyone to pair up as was their normal practice, and so Harry and Draco were giving the lone demonstration in the small space left in the center of the room. Seamus Finnegan and Blaise Zabini scuffled half-heartedly, but neither drew their wands. There was enough magical energy circulating the room as it was.  
  
Harry spit out something particularly unrepeatable about Narcissa and Draco's eyes went the cold, flat color of fish scales. He drew his wand so fast that it made a singing noise, perhaps merely intending to hit Harry with Impedimenta, perhaps with something not found in the textbooks. As he raised his wand into the strike position, the sleeve of his robe slid down into his elbow. Porcelain skin gleamed in the light, innocent and unblemished. The look on Harry's face was equal parts shock and almost disappointment, and altogether nearly as entertaining as the one that he had worn when Draco had first shown himself in the Room of Requirement. Draco met Harry's eyes steadily, daring him to make a comment. For the first time that anyone could remember since September, Draco was not smiling.  
  
Harry and Draco continued to curse each other at regular intervals, but their attacks became rather less in intensity after that.  
  
In December, Dumbledore called Draco into his office to congratulate him on what he called "a marvelous growth of maturity" and to ask him how he and his mother were getting on. Draco inclined his head and replied that things were as well as could be expected. Dumbledore told Draco that he had high hopes for him. Draco acted as if this mattered.  
  
When he walked out of Dumbledore's office, he discovered that there was blood beneath his nails and weeping from his palms like stigmata.  
  
In January, Harry and Draco got into a fistfight in the Great Hall so fierce that it took three teachers to separate them. Draco allowed Ron to get three punches in before something beneath the skin snapped like an elastic band and his own fist connected solidly with Weasley's freckled nose. Blood droplets hung in the air like rubies and Draco felt better than he had in months.   
  
Professor Snape took thirty points off of Gryffindor for the spectacle and, in a rare fit of pique, twenty off of Slytherin as well. "Slytherin is making great strides," he told Draco later in his office. "I will not allow their respect to be damaged now."  
  
Draco thought his face would crack.  
  
In February, Draco got into another fistfight with Ron, this time over the fact that he had asked Ginny to go into Hogsmeade with him and she has accepted. Draco received a fat lip; Ron received a black eye and a knot on the back of his head from where Ginny had whacked him with her Charms textbook. To the shock of a school that had already received a great many since term started, Harry sided with Draco and Ginny (though he did pull Draco aside to inform that he had given Hermione preemptory permission to make an elf hat out of Draco's bladder if Ginny so much as shed a tear). Ron didn't speak to him for nearly two weeks. Draco laughed aloud.  
  
In March, Harry Potter disappeared. Students and faculty alike were thrown into an immediate uproar. The Forbidden Forest was searched, and Fred and George Weasley were contacted for their knowledge of the school's hidey-holes. Even Professor Snape looked tight-lipped and worried.  
  
Though search after search was organized, none of them turned up so much as a gleam from Harry's glasses. Draco and, surprisingly, Blaise took it upon themselves to organize the search effort in the Slytherin quarter of the school, turning their fellow students into an army that efficiently scoured the dungeons. A skeleton was found, but it was proven not to be Harry's after much uproar and three faintings. Student discipline, it would appear, had been much stricter during the early days of the school.  
  
Throughout the days of searching, the Dark Lord ate up increasing portions of Europe. On May Day word arrived that he had taken Paris and a rumor began that Harry had decided to confront prophecy by attacking Voldemort rather than waiting for Voldemort to come to him. As Voldemort's health continued as robustly as ever, the worst was feared. Hermione and Ron, the lone keepers of the faith, were showing visible signs of strain; Hermione's hands developed a perpetual shake and she did worse on her end of the year exams than she had since First Year. It became a regular practice to pull Ron out of fistfights that the teachers only sporadically bothered to break up any longer. Draco was as often the one separating Ron from his enemy of the moment as he was the one doing the fighting. Ron spit frustrated obscenities into his face and Draco only shrugged.  
  
The last day of school dawned clear and blisteringly bright. Draco boarded the carriage that would take them to the Hogwarts Express with his arm around the shoulders of his girl friend, who was spending increasing amounts of time with her eyes rimmed as red as her hair. Draco was very understanding.  
  
"He'll turn up," he whispered to her at regular intervals. "He's the Boy Who Lived, narrow escapes are what he does."  
  
Ginny sniffled, hiccoughed, and made a sound that may have been either acceptance or denial, it was too muffled to tell. She ignored the glares of Slytherin and Gryffindor alike to curl more tightly against him. Draco stroked her hair and made the appropriate shushing noises. To his own ears, his voice sounded like the hissing of a serpent.  
  
Over Ginny's shoulder, Draco watched as one of the thestrals stamped its hoof and twitched a fly off its bony ribcage. In the sunlight, Draco's teeth were very white.  
  
End


End file.
